***OPENING TOMORROW***
Saturday October 15 6-9 PM @ PLUSH GALLERY 918 Dragon St. Dallas, TX
Eric Doeringer COWBOYS* Lizzy Wetzel* Magnificent Beard
THE MEDICINE SHOW IN ITS NEWEST INCARNATION
OCT 15-NOV 12 2011
Friday, October 14, 2011
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
PLAY DEAD
Curated by Willie Binnie & Tamara Coleman
Bows & Arrows May 2011 Dallas, TX
WISE AS SERPENTS
Botany of Desire
Curated by Greg Metz University of Texas at Dallas Main Gallery March 25-April 23, 2011 Dallas, TX
Drawing inspiration from the reciprocal, co-evolving nature of plants and artists, this group exhibition features installations, paintings, drawings, plantings and mixed media by Claudia Borgna, Kimberly Alexander, Ric Heitzman, Rebecca Beachy, Tracy Hicks, Jeffrey Miranda, Vernon Fimple, Lizzy Wetzel, Julia McLain, Albert Scherbarth, and Clayton Browning.
"Lizzy Wetzel is a vision Gardener, constructing a dream world gazebo and alter to the plant teachers. This 'exists in a place deep within the belly of the dream where one meets with guides and gathers information from the ancestors'
Drawing inspiration from the reciprocal, co-evolving nature of plants and artists, this group exhibition features installations, paintings, drawings, plantings and mixed media by Claudia Borgna, Kimberly Alexander, Ric Heitzman, Rebecca Beachy, Tracy Hicks, Jeffrey Miranda, Vernon Fimple, Lizzy Wetzel, Julia McLain, Albert Scherbarth, and Clayton Browning.
"Lizzy Wetzel is a vision Gardener, constructing a dream world gazebo and alter to the plant teachers. This 'exists in a place deep within the belly of the dream where one meets with guides and gathers information from the ancestors'
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| MEET ME IN THE VISION GARDEN |
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| all are welcome, all are one |
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| A stranger left a love offering. Thank you stranger. |
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| Cochineal bugs populate the Nopales |
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| Maidenhair fern, wool, raw silk, graphite |
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| Elk Power |
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| An altar to the plant teachers |
GLASSHOUSES
Glass Houses 22: Lizzy Wetzel
Dallas artist Lizzy Wetzel has a very strong personal iconography that draws on notions of the spiritual and supernatural from a variety of cultures. In addition to her intensely detailed sculptures and installations, she also performs what she calls “service actions,” which would traditionally be called performance art by anybody else. These service actions are inspired by her grandfather, a medical doctor who routinely made house calls on horseback.
Born in Austin, Texas, Lizzy Wetzel received her BFA from the School of Visual Art at the University of North Texas in Denton. She has shown work at Road Agent Gallery in Dallas, FotoFest Houston, the Wichita Falls Museum of Art, Art Palace in Austin, 500X Gallery in Dallas, and Salon Mijangos in San Antonio.
Born in Austin, Texas, Lizzy Wetzel received her BFA from the School of Visual Art at the University of North Texas in Denton. She has shown work at Road Agent Gallery in Dallas, FotoFest Houston, the Wichita Falls Museum of Art, Art Palace in Austin, 500X Gallery in Dallas, and Salon Mijangos in San Antonio.
Sustenance
an exhibition of site specific installations opening September 11, 2010, at 337 Singleton Blvd., Dallas TX 75212. Organized by Stephen Lapthisophon and Anne Lawrence
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| Desertime |
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| Sand, pigment, abandoned interior office window |
Trash Totems
Solo exhibition at Bows & Arrows March 2010 Dallas, TX
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| We are the Earth; sacred and profane. We are material and the things we make are made of the same elements that make us. The constellation of forces that shape who we are also falls upon our creations, determining what form they take, what purpose they serve, who will love them, and who will throw them away. Will they live long or be consumed by loneliness? In Trash Totems, the sacred becomes not a quality put on an object, nor a spell put on a person, but a special bond that exists between the two. This magick imbues an object with the divine, allowing it to channel the immaterial relationships that bind us to one another. These relationships become the things that Lizzy Wetzel is harnessing. Wetzel’s practice is one of seeking out these sacred relationships and collecting the objects they are contained within. She speaks the language of the silent, showing us that these things will talk to those who listen. An orange peel, Joe Frank’s hair, a bone fragment - they all become her primary materials. In these 13 sculptures, she combines these materials through an intricate alchemy to build new relationships from her old ones. Each element added creates a new facet. What was a love for only two becomes a triangle, then a hexagon, an octagon, and eventually, by including us all, becomes a circle. They are totems; monuments celebrating the life we have had together. Gravity pulls the Earth's weight into itself, compressing all of its material into stone and flesh. Like the pressure upon an igneous rock, these forces push on us along with our refuse. We are of this earth! As we bury ourselves amongst our things, we rejoice in marvel, consumed by the world and transformed by its gravity. -James Case Leal |
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| The Messiah |
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| RomoHomo |
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| Natural Beauty |
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| Delicate Arrangement |
Slow Time
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| Shell/Shelter/Shhh |
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| Personal Fettish |
LIZZY WETZEL: TRASH TOTEMS
Bows and Arrows, Dallas
March 27–April 20, 2010
Texas native Lizzy Wetzelʼs work is usually easily
recognized: bones, bees wax, glow-in-the-dark colors,
neon slick paint, intricate altars and carefully
choreographed rituals. Usually, the work has a function:
to cleanse, to protect, to explain, to proselytize.
In previous shows at Road Agent and Women and
Their Work, she created environments for performance,
whether public or not, in which the art served
as the prop for the action.
In her newest exhibition at Bows and Arrows, Wetzel
opts for private ritual over public ceremony. She
described this work as being more “honest, pathetic,
and true to life,” personifying the objects as “little
monsters.” This body of work started with two small
fragile table-top size sculptures from 2007, “The
Messiah” and “Mother of Pearl,” shown in Miami at
Aqua Hotel Art Fair. By spring 2008 Wetzel had
moved to New York City and found herself with the
luxury of having a studio, but none of the specialized
supplies that she had carefully procured at her
Shamrock Building studio in Dallas. So, she turned
to the most abundant resource at hand-–the trash of
New York. The first of the NY totems was a small
shrine to nature with a cut out picture of a Christmas
tree mounted on cardboard and a desiccated
orange peel set on a hunk of concrete, “Natural
Beauty.”
This work is puzzling, vulnerable, and sincere.
Some of it is surprisingly stark, like “Shell/Shelter/
Shhh,” a piece of cardboard bent in an upsidedown
V attached to the wall aligned with a white
painted diamond shape. It is installed to fit just over
her head, as a personal shelter. My favorite is “Personal
Fetish,” a stick balanced horizontally on two
large gold-colored nails with a heavy cotton cord
tied in the center trailing downwards, then caught
up in intricate neon pink thread towards the bottom.
It is striking from a distance, simple, and eventually
complicated. There is something very satisfying and
intuitive about these two pieces. They feel like they
are part of a conversation the artist is having with
herself about her own practice of making objects.
Donʼt fear, Wetzel hasnʼt abandoned her trademark
neon slick paint; there is plenty of it in the show, and
feathers and bones. Bows and Arrows is an art
gallery/floral/craft shop at the intersection of multiple
creativities that value the skill of the hand and the
eye. Included in the show, installed with other shop
merchandise and props, are a line of accessories
by Wetzel under the label Snake Oil, including
leather talismans and bib necklaces along with
other eccentricities. Wetzel is choosing to blur the
lines between craft, commerce, and art with both
her choice of venue and her own production.
—ANNE LAWRENCE
More Than This
Curated by Anne Lawrence CADD Art Lab 2009 Dallas, TX
“More Than This” is the second exhibition presented at CADD Art Lab, a new venue for talking about and
presenting contemporary art in downtown Dallas. The exhibition will feature paintings, sculpture,
drawings, and installations by artists including Anderson and Low, Scott Anderson, Frances Bagley, Scott
Barber, Kevin Bewersdorf, Paul Booker, Candace Briceno, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Tracy Hicks, Terrell
James, Tom Orr, Jennifer Rose, Carl Suddath, Takako Tanabe, Jackie Tileston, Erik Tosten, and Lizzy
Wetzel.
***NIGHT SEERS***
The impulse to create independent systems is well demonstrated. Like Tom Orr, Frances Bagley borrows
objects from everyday life, but imbues them with a sense of mystery and fantasy. We understand we are
walking into her world. Lizzy Wetzel’s preference for bones, wax, and natural pigment powder contradict
the neon colors and bold graphic look of her shamanistic installations. Likewise, the mythbuilding of
Trenton Doyle Hancock and fragments of alternate worlds revealed in the large paintings of Scott
Anderson and Jackie Tileston bring the viewer into private universes with established rules and
boundaries.
The title “More Than This” refers both to the potential of objects to create meaning--whether calling into
question the world around you or divulging an internal fantasy--and to the futility of it, as the Roxy Music
song claims, “more than this/there is nothing.”
objects from everyday life, but imbues them with a sense of mystery and fantasy. We understand we are
walking into her world. Lizzy Wetzel’s preference for bones, wax, and natural pigment powder contradict
the neon colors and bold graphic look of her shamanistic installations. Likewise, the mythbuilding of
Trenton Doyle Hancock and fragments of alternate worlds revealed in the large paintings of Scott
Anderson and Jackie Tileston bring the viewer into private universes with established rules and
boundaries.
The title “More Than This” refers both to the potential of objects to create meaning--whether calling into
question the world around you or divulging an internal fantasy--and to the futility of it, as the Roxy Music
song claims, “more than this/there is nothing.”
show. Scott Anderson ‘s large paintings look like 1950′s sci-fi pulp novel covers at some points, and some weird deconstructed architecture or interdimensional rift in others while Jackie Tileston imposes brightly colorful line patterns onto more somber scenes that are somewhat reminiscent of JMW Turner . Kevin
Bewersdorf‘s GIF Mandala is spellbinding and technically impressive,
and Lizzy Wetzel‘s installation is magical (and smells like burnt
hair)." Ivan Lozano, Glasstire, 2008
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